Here are my reactions to four more science fiction short stories as they appeared in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 18 (1956). Three of the tales concern time-travel, while the other is on the level of a good Stephen King horror story...
THE MAN WHO CAME EARLY by Poul Anderson
Set in Iceland 1,000 years ago, an American soldier stationed there in the present (1956, that is) during an abnormal storm finds himself transported to that time and has to deal with the many often insurmountable cultural and technological differences between his age and that of his new hosts. It's told from the perspective of an Icelandic clan leader...this story reminded me of the culture gap in that old comedy TV series The Beverly Hillbillies the way good old Jed Clampett used to, especially the parts where the narrator expressed his views on the way things were in society as absolutes, projecting his own people's motivations and onto that of the bewildered time traveler...
A WORK OF ART by James Blish
Richard Strauss has been brought back to life in a future society in order to compose some fresh works for performance...or so it seems in this story that has an unexpectedly good ending. A Work of Art is an interesting look into the mind of a creative musical artist. But what got me howling with laughter was the author's uncanny prediction, back in 1956, of a future phenomenon called "space music"...and he described it perfectly! In the future, according to the author, machines will be the driving creative force behind music...I'm not so sure we're not close to that state of affairs right now...
HORRER HOWCE by Margaret St. Clair
Horrer Howce has to be one of the scariest stories I have read recently...if you're prone to nightmares you definitely want to avoid it. As for me, this effect places it as one of my favorites. Stephen King couldn't have done better with this tale of a creator of amusement park "horror houses" and his attempts to get entrepreneurs to buy his product...only one problem: he has trouble getting them past their examinations of his projects...
COMPOUNDED INTEREST by Mack Reynolds
Starting in the year 1300, a strangely dressed and speaking "Mister Smith" appears every hundred years at a Venice banking firm, investing gold, making instructions on his interest-accruing account and making predictions about the "future". A time-travel tale that deliberately makes the reader wonder how it all could have come about, as the surprise ending reveals...
I'll be taking a break from this blog next week...my next review of sci-fi short stories will be in a couple of weeks...
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